WHOOP Was a Week Away from Bankruptcy. Now It's Worth $10.1 Billion

เลือกโหมดการเรียน:

3000 Oxford Words4000 IELTS Words5000 Oxford Words3000 Common Words1000 TOEIC Words5000 TOEFL Words

คำบรรยาย (21)

0:00I was 22 years old. I had never started a company. I had never had a full-time job. I was

0:04building a business at the intersection of hardware and software and data science

0:10and medicine, and I wasn't a hardware engineer or computer scientist. So,

0:15I think there was a lot of skepticism that I was going to be able to build this technology.

0:19Hundreds of investors said no.

0:21And so, you know, every day I just tried to pick myself up

0:23and put one foot in front of the other and keep building.

0:26In 2012, while studying at Harvard, Will Ahmed started building what would become WHOOP.

0:32Built around a screenless wearable, the business is now valued at $10.1 billion dollars and

0:39has been embraced by some of the world's top athletes,

0:42including LeBron James, Michael Phelps and Cristiano Ronaldo.

0:47There was a period in 2017, 2018 where WHOOP had built, I think,

0:52a cool brand. It was used by the world's best athletes. The technology was very powerful,

0:57but we hadn't yet figured out how to make a real business out of it.

1:00I mean, we were a week away from declaring bankruptcy before we got a deal done.

1:04But none of that success was guaranteed.

1:07Just 2 years after launching WHOOP, the pressure nearly broke its founder. I had

1:12raised tens of millions of dollars. We had a team of 30, 40 people,

1:16and I felt totally strung out. I was drinking too much coffee. I was drinking too much alcohol.

1:22It all kind of climaxed around a day where I had a panic attack

1:25and checking myself into the hospital.

ฝึกฟัง